The 2nd International Conference on “Entrepreneurship: Emphasizing Improvement of Business Environment” was organized by the Faculty of Entrepreneurship, University of Tehran. Thirty five distinguished entrepreneurship professors and scholars from all over the world and more than 400 national entrepreneurship scholars and practitioners participated in the two-day conference which was held on 22-23 February, 2014 at the Alame Amini Hall, University of Tehran. The conference emphasized the improvement of business environment and aimed at discussing and investigating the findings of the researches and studies on entrepreneurship development and business environment improvement. The conference provided an appropriate forum for the participants to exchange their information, ideas and experiences on the advanced methods and techniques of entrepreneurship and business environment improvement and the effective policies and practical approaches for entrepreneurship and business environment development.The conference opening session started on Sunday, 22 February at 8:30am and with recitation of some verses of the holy Quran and playing of the national anthem of Islamic Republic of Iran. Professor Faghih was the first speaker of the opening ceremony. He spoke on the procedure of the conference and reported on the number of abstracts received and accepted full papers. The second speaker was the University of Tehran president who highlighted the increasingly importance of entrepreneurship and the necessity of paying more attention to entrepreneurship development. Professor Paul Davidson Raynolds, the famous American entrepreneurship practitioner, Dato Ghazali Bin Yusoff, one of the well-known Malaysian practitioners and Dr. Rabie, the Minister of Labor, Cooperative and Social Welfare were the next speakers. Dr. Rabie emphasized that entrepreneurship is a cure for problems Iran is currently struggling with, specifically graduates’ unemployment. He stated: we cannot realize “the idea of a job for each Iranian” without a great entrepreneurship movement in the whole country. Pointing to the name of this year as the year of “Economic Epic”, he stressed that entrepreneurship has played a critical role in the progress of developing countries and we need to realize the aims of the year of the “Economic Epic” by supporting entrepreneurs across the country. He also highlighted the most pivotal plans of the Ministry of Labor, Cooperative and Social Welfare as, helping the improvement of business environment, designing a comprehensive entrepreneurial platform, planning for the establishment of a specific organization for Iran’s entrepreneurship system, developing a comprehensive plan for entrepreneurship education and training, designing a supportive package for entrepreneurs by the Supreme Labor Council, planning to launch an Exchange Market for ideas, helping universities link their education programs to the job markets, constructing the infrastructures for developing the components of a proper job, supporting the economic companies with competitive advantages (which is the approach of “the prudence and hope” administration), equipping jobless people with professional skills and developing home businesses with the approach of creating chain networks. Dr. Rabie also stated that we could develop entrepreneurship not only by developing a process for learning the required skills and nurturing creative people but also supporting and encouraging entrepreneurs in order to move away from capitalism. In this section, the first Venture Banking started by Mr. Saroukhani, the Chief Executive Officer of Mellat Bank. The opening section finished at 10am.

Then, the conference followed by giving keynote speakers and presentations in three concurrent panels and finished at 18pm. In the two-day conference, 150 papers were presented by the national and international authors.During the second day of the conference, authors presented their papers in the three concurrent panels. In the closing ceremony, the First Entrepreneurial Leaders’ Awards were presented and the award was granted to 6 entrepreneurial and business leaders who had an international business share, exported at least 20% of their products and had business and trading dealings with at least 3 countries. These entrepreneurial leaders were introduced as the “International Entrepreneurs” and were appreciated for their compassionate and intensive striving in the economic sanction period. Among these entrepreneurial leaders were: Mr. Davood Abedi, CEO of Behdad (Taj) Chemical Company; Mr. Sayed Jalil Hashemi, CEO of Setare Nik Arya Automotive Company; Mr. Haj Hossein Heydari, CEO of DECAL; and Mr. Chavooshi, CEO of Isfahan Oil Refining Company.

The timetable for the ICE2014 conference is now available, please follow the link below to download the pdf version

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Coference Tracks:

The conference covers a wide range of topics around the issue of entrepreneurship development, emphasizing improvement of business environment. The conference will address the following sub-themes track, (but is not certainly limited to)